The International Booker Prize for fiction was given to German writer Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann on Tuesday for their work “Kairos,” which tells the tale of a complicated love affair in the latter years of East Germany’s existence.

Erpenbeck expressed her hope that the book will educate readers about the reality of life in the now-extinct Communist nation, which differed from the portrayal in the Academy Award–winning 2006 film “The Lives of Others,” which focused on widespread governmental monitoring in the 1980s.

“Everyone is aware of only two things: they had a wall and the Stasi terrorised everyone,” the woman remarked. “There is more than that.”

“Kairos” tells the story of a relationship from its idyllic start to its tragic conclusion and makes comparisons between individual lives and governmental operations.

Selected from 149 novels submitted, the book defeated five other contenders to win the honour, which honours international fiction translated into English and released in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The author and translator split the award money of fifty pounds ($64,00).

Erpenbeck’s book about a student and an elderly writer is “a richly textured evocation of a tormented love affair, the entanglement of personal and national transformations,” according to Canadian broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel, who served as the panel’s chair.

She claimed that the “eloquence and eccentricities” of Erpenbeck’s writing are captured in Hofmann’s translation.

Each year, the International Booker Prize is given out. It is held in conjunction with the English-language literature Booker Prize, which is awarded in the autumn.

Another book about communism and its aftermath in Europe, “Time Shelter,” by Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov and translated by Angela Rodel, took first place last year.

The prize was set up to boost the profile of fiction in other languages — which accounts for only a small share of books published in Britain — and to salute the underappreciated work of literary translators.

Erpenbeck is the first German winner of the International Booker Prize, and Hofmann is the first male translator to win since the prize launched in its current form in 2016.

He said he felt his style complemented that of the author.

“I think she is a tighter and more methodical writer than I would be,” he said, and the English-language book is “a mixture of her order and my chaos.”